Title: Designing university courses to promote lifelong learning

Authors: Philippe C. Baveye

Addresses: Laboratory of Geoenvironmental Science and Engineering, Cornell University, Bradfield Hall, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA

Abstract: The traditional pedagogy of university courses encourages students to learn in ways that are unlike anything they will practice later during their career, within or especially outside academia. At that stage, most if not all of the learning is autonomous and self directed. In this context, this article presents a non traditional course format, meant to prepare students effectively for lifelong, self-directed learning, and consisting of individual tutorials, learning contracts and formal lectures serving as scaffolds. The background and structure of the course are presented in detail. Several challenges associated with the approach are also addressed.

Keywords: adult learning; autodidaxy; pedagogy; higher education; lifelong learning; university courses; course design; self-directed learning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIL.2008.017559

International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2008 Vol.5 No.4, pp.378 - 393

Published online: 17 Mar 2008 *

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